Index for posts concerning By Over The Rhine

By Over the Rhine (The Devil and his Craftiness) by invot
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By Over the Rhine (Not every man’s Father) by invot
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By Over the Rhine (under the fig tree) by invot
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By Over the Rhine (what began in water will end in fire) by invot
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By Over the Rhine (The Devil and his Craftiness)

Posted on November 23rd, 2008 by invot.
Categories: By Over The Rhine.

That day began like any other. The sky was no grayer, the ground was no colder, the morning rush hour was no more hectic than any other late autumn day –but something felt different. I felt it seeping under my skin and playing like the whispers of the dead against my flesh. I just didn’t know what it was, some nameless feeling maybe, and I could hear its grotesque moan behind the toots and screeches of the traffic on my street. Deep inside I had some strange tangle of emotion but I declared within myself that my paranoia would not dismember my routine so easily. After all, my wife and I already went through the trouble of rolling out of bed that morning, and everything after that is a breeze. Driving to church shouldn’t have made me feel so anxious.

I brushed off my anxieties and headed for the door, grabbing the house keys off the hook above my kitchen counter. As the floorboards of the front porch moaned in agony and I reached to lock the front door, I noticed how heavy the clouds have gotten that morning – it looked as if it was going to rain, so I stepped back inside momentarily to grab a coat for my wife and I.

I looked back and saw her waiting in the car, her face had a smudge of anxiety across it and I couldn’t tell why.

“I don’t know why, but I feel so unsettled.” My wife told me as I stepped into the car.

“I think I feel it too.” I replied. We looked at each-other for a moment and both hoped the other would elaborate on the matter. However, after a few seconds had passed we both just released a meek chuckle and I started the car.

The girl once lived with five of her brothers, three sisters, an uncle, and her parents, she told her new friends, all happily smuggled in a brick house about the size of a two-car garage. About a month ago, she explained, she was forced to live with Shamaaha so that she could be supervised.

She spoke casually, though everyone around us looked panicked. As she walked through the village Shamaaha followed close beside her.
“I knew they would come!” She repeated throughout her story, “Didn’t I tell you they’d come?” She looked up at Shamaaha who was still trying to understand what was going on around him.

The walk to Shamaaha’s house was a short one: a large house, or large in regards to the bungalows that surrounded it, with pale brick walls and a clay-tile roof. It resembled a vacation home, minus any costly architectural detail, and the “come and relax” feeling the structure emitted, on an average – not like today – kind of day, could be felt across the entire village.

The girl led her visitors in by the hand, leading them down a hallway, across a kitchen thieved of all its appliances and into a large room scattered with old, beaten-up couches all possessing a sort of thrift store nostalgia. There was one small, cleverly-placed window that somehow managed to brighten the entire room. Covering an entire wall, a shelf filled with knickknacks hung awkwardly close to the dusty floor. Thin tapestries passed for area rugs and wooden crates passed for coffee tables. The room looked well lived-in, however empty it might have been at the moment.

The little girl dived into a couch, in a way only a little girl can dive into a couch, and emitted a vibrant facial expression solely aimed at Shamaaha that said clearly she was laughing on the inside, which caused her, by means of a youthful lack of self-control, to almost laugh on the outside. Her continence provided a sobering contrast to the state of her frail and abused body. She managed, however, to make the scars trailing across her lips to look ridiculous with a big enough smile, which could only be seen as a miraculous super-power to the visitors standing in the corner of the room.

She watched everyone patiently, waiting for Shamaaha to speak his always-eloquent words, but realized slowly that he had none.

“You have a lovely home.” The American man basically coughed the phrase out of his mouth, causing his wife and Shamaaha to jolt slightly at the sound. The woman stared at her husband and communicated with him through her eyes for a moment, a trick only those who have been married fifteen-plus years can master, telling him to let her try her hand at decoding this mysterious situation.

She stepped forward boldly and made her way to sit at the couch. The girl excitedly invited her to sit down, so the woman did. “How did you know we’d be here?” The woman asked gently.

To this the girl released the most miraculous smile.

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By Over the Rhine (Not every man’s Father)

Posted on November 12th, 2008 by invot.
Categories: By Over The Rhine.

My wife talks. My wife talks a lot. I’m not saying this as a complaint - no, not at all, but as a sigh of relief, because I, for one, am not much of a speaker. On our way to Kinshasa she managed to have a conversation with every person on the airplane. That’s just how she is; which is such a blessing because that’s now at all how I am. The whole flight from departure in Luxor, to landing in Kinshasa my eyes were fixed to the window, watching the ground flow towards the rising sun.

“Please God, no surprises. Let this trip be a pleasant one. Don’t let anyone get hurt. Keep us safe.” My breath fogged the window as I paused to collect my thoughts. “And let our words be the right ones.”

It was a hot day in Atlanta, like most other days. People walked slowly through the wide halls of the terminal building, as if the heat had retarded their steps. Those who sat flinched, though mildly, in their seats, trying to brush off seemingly endless waves of heat.

A cafe sat right in the middle of a busy walkway, possessing only two customers: a quiet man reading while waiting patiently for his wife to return from the ladies room, and an attractive blond woman who appeared to be a thrill-seeker - bearing an overstuffed backpack, sunscreen poking out of a side-pocket.

“Is that a Bible?” Said the woman, arching over the man’s back and pressing her pointed finger against a page.

The man looked at her and then quickly returned his gaze towards his Bible. “Oh… umm… this?” He said, fumbling every word out of his mouth. “Yes, it’s a Bible. New King James translation. My favorite.”

She gave a crooked smirk and grabbed a stool from the table next to him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Umm, sure.”

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything. I always wanted to ask, because I’ve always been curious. How can someone believe that that book is true?”

“Huh? Well… what what’s so hard to believe about it?”

She twisted a lock of her hair with her fingers. “I mean, like, I can’t believe in a God who would send people to Hell. Isn’t God supposed to be a loving God? Why would He allow us to be eternally tortured? That doesn’t sound very loving to me.”

“It does to me. Because, well… umm…”

“What? Are you kidding me? Are you Christians into ‘S & M’ or something? How is that loving?”

“It’s funny you asked that question because of what I happen to be reading right now. In the Gospel of John, chapter eight, Jesus is talking to a crowd of unbelievers. He told them in verse… hold on…” He flipped a page back and forward. “In verse thirty-eight He says, ‘I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.’”

“And what does that prove?” The woman leaned back and sipped at her coffee.

“Well, in the next verse, the crowd responds to Him saying that they are descendants of Abraham, which is true, because he is the blood-father of every Jew. But Jesus says in response that they are not his children, which confuses the crowd.”

“You’re making no sense. What does that have to do with innocent people going to hell?”

“Umm… the point is… you see Jesus - He wasn’t talking about genes or family trees. He’s talking about the heart. He commonly does. They weren’t doing the things that Abraham did. They didn’t share the same heart.” The man closed His Bible and turned to the woman. “He says that they are of the Devil, because they share Satan’s desires. They share his heart - not God’s and not Abraham’s.”

“Are you calling me Satanic?” The woman sounded more confused than offended.

“Oh, no. No. I never said anything like that. You see, my point is that Hell was originally created for Satan and his angels, but in the future it will contain those who join Satan, those who chose to share his heart and be his children. And God is kind enough to let us, like the angels, spend eternity with the father we chose, whose heart we chose to adopt. I adopted God’s, and I consider myself His child, so I really don’t have to worry about hell. Which is nice, because I probably deserve to go there than to heaven…”

The woman shot up from her chair. “All you Christians are the same! Whenever you find anyone who’s different than you, who doesn’t live up to your stupid, contradictory standards, you tell them they’re going to hell! Maybe I don’t want to be your clone! Maybe I want to live my life the way I want to live it! Does that mean I’m going to hell!? Just because I’m my own person!?” And with that she was gone.

By the time the man turned back towards his Bible and opened it to where he left off, his wife returned to their table and reached for her glass of tea.

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By Over the Rhine (under the fig tree)

Posted on October 27th, 2008 by invot.
Categories: By Over The Rhine.

Jesus answered and said to Nathanael,
“Because I said to you,
‘I saw you under the fig tree,’
do you believe?
You will see greater things than these.”
-John 1:50

There are scars around her lips from when they tried to sew her mouth shut. There are welts piled on her back from when they tried to beat out the evil spirits. There is brokenness in her eyes - so much brokenness.

My wife stepped out from beside me, squatted down and looked her in the eyes, “Ca va?”

The girl unwrapped herself from my leg and cried lowly, “J’ai su que vous viendriez…” She turned around and shouted to the others in their native language, causing them to shift uncomfortably. Her voice echoed and cracked, both amplified and shattered by emotion.

We wondered now, after such an unsettling arrival, how we were going to settle among the people. Maybe the girl could help.

Not long ago, in the deep jungles of Africa, beneath a tree, a longing was admitted, a cry was heard, a vision descended upon a little girl, a girl who longed to find the truth.

The day before, Shamaaha, the tribe mystic, was surprised to find a young visitor enter his tent. “Little, girl?” He said, “Do not tell me you have come to join my harlot, little girl.”

“Oh, Great Shamaaha, no.” The girl replied, “I came here because…” She paused. “You know a lot about the spirits, don’t you?”

“What a silly question, little girl, of course I do!” The charms that hung from Shamaaha’s clothing jingled with his laughter.

The girl slowly sat down on the dirt floor, trying to gather a thought that swarmed all around her. “The spirits, what are they?”

Shamaaha reached for a tiny charm that hung off his shoulder and casually studied its form. “Did not your parents, little girl, explain these things to you?”

“Oh, yes. Yes they did. As well as they could. But they do not know as much as you.”

Shamaaha laughed. “That is very true. No one knows as much as me. That is why I am Shamaaha!”

The girl smiled amusingly. “What is a spirit, Shamaaha?”

Shamaaha stood up and began to pace slowly across the dirt floor. “A spirit is what causes things to happen. Things that we can’t do like cause a flower to grow or cause a river to flow, those things the spirits are responsible for. They move the sun across the sky and make the stars appear at night. They are very powerful creatures. That is why we must make sure we do not offend them. You see, though there are many spirits, little girl, and most of them are very kind, some are not. ‘Magi’ are angry spirits who cause disaster. Do not find yourself anywhere near a Magi, little girl.”

The girl paused for a moment. Her hands were fiddling in the dirt. “My parents have told me all of this. But they cannot explain to me where the spirits came from. Where do they come from?”

“What a silly question, little girl! The spirits never came from anywhere!”

“But, who made them?”

“Little girl, they were never made. They were always spirits, and always will be spirits.”

“But who made us?”

“Little girl!” Cried Shamaaha. “You do not know anything about the spiritual world! Nothing made us or the spirits. As our people have said for generations, ‘We are as we have always been.’ There is nowhere we came from. We’re from here. The spirits are from here.”

When Shamaaha finished, the girl began to wonder if he really knew as much as he claimed.

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By Over the Rhine (what began in water will end in fire)

Posted on October 20th, 2008 by invot.
Categories: By Over The Rhine.

Like the tiniest pebble emerging from a landslide, the two of us stood mystified as she made her way through the panicked, babbling masses and slowly towards our mud-battered jeep. I slid out of my seat and erected myself with the weight of my backpack. In her eyes was the same look of amazement that was in mine. Her frail body stopped a foot away from where I stood. My wife and I, along with the girl, spent a moment completely still, evaluating a situation none of us even remotely understood, and when the moment passed I found my left pantleg wrapped by her arms, stained by her mysterious tears. Every creature in the jungle lie quiet, staring at this little girl clothed by a single washrag discarded as useless long ago.If it wasn’t for her, the tribe would have killed us. If it wasn’t for us, the tribe would have killed her. And if it wasn’t for Jesus Christ, well, I would have no story to tell.

Midnight, and all around the airport the lights grew strangely dim. A group of curious travelers gathered tightly around a married couple seated in front of the ticketing desk for gate 1 - the only gate of ten still opened. The city of Luxor showed itself slowly in tiny dots scattered amidst the windows.

“‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody gets to the Father except through Me.’” The words seemed louder in the darkness of the terminal building. “Jesus Christ said that.” The crowd thinned at the sound of that name. “You see, my husband and I have seen many temples in our life. And oftentimes, it’s easier to keep track of each temple’s name than to sort out all the names of every god they paid tribute. But you see, there’s something special about the temple here, in Luxor, because written in ancient letters on the foot of its alter are these words: ‘to the unknown God.’”

The sound of jet engines briefly rumbled the terminal. “There is something special about this God, because this God is not ‘a god’, but ‘The God.’ The God that these ancient men worshiped is the God who I wish to talk to you all about today.

“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in any man-made temple, and He isn’t worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives life, breath, and everything to everyone. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, because we all are His offspring. You see, because we are the offspring of God, we shouldn’t think that God is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by our own two hands. God is nothing like the statues or symbols we’ve worshiped in the past. And thankfully, those times God overlooked, but now He commands everyone, everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ, who God has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. You see, Jesus is that ‘One.’ He is the only. Only though faith in Jesus Christ can we be saved from damnation…”

The feminine voice on the loudspeaker seemingly prided herself in speaking every language except English.

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